Creeper World 3 is what happens when cellular automata takes over a strategy simulation. Instead of discreet units that attack your base, a fluid-like substance spreads over the terraformable terrain. Your base, your weapons, your strategy... you must adapt them all.

Creeper World 3: Cellular automata takes over a strategy simulation.

Creeper World 3 bends what it means to be a strategy title.

Instead of heavily scripted A.I., players find themselves engaging an enemy with theoretically predictable behavior yet which is shockingly interesting to engage. Players can build fortifications and stick around forever. Players can go for domination, quick strategic kills, or amass huge stockpiles of resources. Some play for speed, others to create art. Tiny maps, large maps, five minute missions, five day missions... the simulation scales to handle all of these scenarios.

User generated content is critical and supported at multiple levels in Creeper World 3.

Dial up worlds using the DMD (Dial Map Device) and tweak dozens of constraints. Then, play and share the addresses via an on-line database. Create your own maps using the built-in map editor and upload and share on-line. Or, join with thousands of other players and peruse the databases of worlds created by others. Want to create a new weapon, a unit, an enemy, or an effect? Use the built in scripting language to create what you dream. Hundreds of engine commands are exposed and examples abound on the forums and grow daily. You can even take the built in story maps and make your own. In fact, all of the built in story missions were written using the built-in editor and the CRPL scripting language.

Some of the high level features are:

Thermodynamic/fluid physics based play.

Billions of total missions.

Story arc with insane and unique enemies.

Explore hundreds of star systems with thousands of worlds in Prospector missions.

Hundreds of hand crafted missions in the Alpha Sector.

Dial up your own mission worlds using the 'Dial Map Device' and share the address.

Create your own maps using the included map editor.

Play on maps of variable size, dimension, and shape.

Script your own enemies and effects using the built in scripting language.

***Written using a key provided by the Developer for review purposes***

Creeper World 3: Arc Eternal is a unique tower defense game/RTS that is more tower offense than defense, something I haven't seen before. You are a captain of a ship who has just woken up after a very very long time in cryo sleep and in the time you have been gone humanity has vanished as all the civilasations that once were have been wiped out by the creeper, a strange organism which destroys everything it touches. At the time of writing this review I have only put in three hours and have barely scratched the surface but as you can see from other reviewers' play time there is a lot to this game and a lot of replayability.

+Nice pixel graphics+Simple UI and great controls+A very interesting story +Interesting concept, instead of building towers in the path of an oncoming enemy you create networks of towers and take the fight to the enemy. There are small enemy towers which emitt the creepers which gradually spread across the map, using towers you have to beat back the creepers until your network of towers is close enough to use a special offensive tower which destroys the emitter. The gameplay is quite hard to explain and I probably haven't done it justice so it's best to watch some gameplay videos.+Your towers can be moved as the creepers are beaten back out of range of your towers+It's challenging without feeling too difficult or unfair+The mission menu is an interactive starmap and you get to see your ship travel from one planet or star system to another+Nice soundtrack+Can be paused at any point during a mission+You can create and share your own levels

-Either some people are god-like at this game or the leaderboards have been cheated-If you make any mistakes with what you build early on in a mission it usually ruins your chances of winning, for example if you don't build enough reactors at the start and you run low on energy later in the game you will most likely be destroyed. It adds another layer of difficulty but it can be pretty annoying

Verdict:9

An absolutely brilliant game that is more like an RTS than a TD with an impressively good story, a must buy for fans of either genre.

Ok the fact that I have nearly done 2000hrs on this game I think speaks for it's self. I love this game, there are so many elements to this that you can never get bored of it. I also own the first two creeper worlds which are great fun to play but this newer creeper world has gone above and beyond what I thought this game would evolve into.

This is the first game I would try to call Tower Offense since the towers are what you are trying to win the game with. I found the game to be very fun to watch, its strangly satisfying to aim artilery at large piles of goo. I greatly enjoy tower defense and I love RTS and it very much combines the two.

Super fun time. The storyline is good with a nice twist and once you beat it you can keep playing with an almost endless supply of maps other people have made ranging from very easy too rip you're own hair out you cannot win lol.

Playing TD's as a youngun, who recently discovered the wonders of the internet, were absolutely incredible times. But I always got a bit tired of the repetative movement of putting down another tower, upgrading them blah blah blah.... and then just leaving the game to run it's course, throwing wave after wave of enemies until your computer began to stutter and lag behind as it was somehow managing to cope with an incredible array of pixals being thrown into your eyeballs. I am mainly talking about the infamous Bloons TD, which will always remain my favourite TD, although there are others. However, this game is a little different in that respect.

I like to think of it as a combination of a TD and RTS, in the sense that The Creeper, some blue liquid thing, is not stuck on rails and just has to get from A to B as it floats down a path ignoring all defences on its journey, it is instead open to go where it pleases, only limited by the geography of the landscape. The RTS element in the game is the fact that you build up cannons to protect your 'base' and resource collectors. They take time to build and must be placed strategically in order to maximise the efficiency of your defence and keep The Creeper at bay. After that, you must push forward and move your defences forward even more. But they can get delinked from getting resources, so extenders are put in place. On large maps, it can be very rewarding seeing a huge web of links and seeing your packages of Anti-Creeper and firepower flowing down these pathways.

In later missions, more enemies arise and give even more things to think about when planning out defences, but don't worry. A reasonably nice variety in defence types can help with that. But you'll have to play it in order to find out what.

An interesting take on the tower defense genre. In a lot of ways it plays a lot more like a conventional RTS, with interesting resource management, movable units, and requiring the player to offensively attack enemy structures, rather than sitting back and waiting. Instead of fighting discrete enemies, you battle back a flow of liquid-like creeper. Most levels have multiple viable strategies to beat them, giving the player a lot of decisions on how to tackle a level.

The game features a massive amount of content, with a lengthy, well written campaign, along with nearly infinite player created and procedurally generated levels.

absolutely fantastic! Amazing gameplay, soundtrack, and story. The visuals are nice and there is so much content! If you are sceptical about buying, I suggest you play the online demo "Creeper World 3: Abraxis" first. It gives you the perfect taste of mechanics while still leaving you wanting more. Absolutely recommend!

Extremely fun Strategy game. For the people who think "Oh, it's just another boring TD." It's really not. It's high paced and it doesn't even seem like a TD once you play into it a bit. Challenging, you never wanna stop. The level editing is genius, and you can have some pretty hard levels. I'm rating an 11/10.

Probably the most unique RTS I've ever seen. The increased variety of scenarios possible compared to the first Creeper world provides depth of gameplay beyond the options of rush to the objective or turtle your starting position until you steamroll the neverending tide of creeper trying to drown you (not that either of those can't be fun).

This is a pretty good game continuing the great Creeper World series. I would highly reccommend it to anyone who has played the Flash games and likes what they played. The storyline is pretty solid and the gameplay is flawless and endless. Apparently there are bugs since they're patching them but I never notice them... maybe I've played too much Planetside 2 :P

9/10. $15 is a bit much and tbh I bought it on discount, but I'd rather consider it a donation to this great series then the purchase of a somewhat small game. But as stated before, it's as good as flawless, has a virtually infite number of missions and it's tons of fun!

This game is a little bit different tower defence. You don't meet waves of a enemy, but fight against a endless pool of goo (creeper) with guns and try shut the goo spring. (creeper emiter in game). The enemy has no AI but use gravity against you. In fact, gravity with good map design makes game hard but simple if your base is lowest level of map and creeper masses are coming from uper hill, you get my drill.

The game has prequels made by flash on the internet so feel free and try

I found this gem in a bundle that I had purchased. It's a mix between an endless tower defense and a real time strategy game. a purple ooze gradually expands and you have to defend against it and attack it, slowly expanding and growing your base.

I did feel like eventually I found a strategy that would work against most maps. Defend as large an area as you can, and then slowly but surely break through and take what you need. Part of the challenge comes in defeating the maps as quickly as possible, but if you take it slow, you'll eventually be able to beat any map which isn't time based.

This game is one of the most unique games i have ever payed. I have been in the creeper world since the beginning, and i was very excited when i noticed a version was coming out for steam. the mechanics of the creeper are unlike any opposing force you will encounter in any game. It is easy to learn btu difficult to perfect, you are always learning new strategies and it is highly addictive to play. Highly recommended.

Although some levels can get a bit grindy, the devs and level designers have taken great pains to ensure that you're constantly facing new challenges and new situations. Arc Eternal has some twists that Abraxis seemed to be lacking - most problems in previous iterations of the series could be solved with "add more gun."

Story's alright - better than I expected, actually - the user made levels and Alpha sectors have no shortage of additional challenges, and overall, Creeper World will more than pay itself off in entertainment.

Creeper World 3 is quite a unique game, it feels like a tower defense game mixed with real-time-strategy elements.

Like in most other RTS games, you have to build a base, though here it is more like a 'power grid', which is essential to power all your defensive and offensive structures. The main difference here though, is the enemy. Instead of tanks, humans or monsters, you have a lava like liquid, that slowly creeps its way to your base and tries to 'fill' the entire map.

It's called 'The Creeper'. I know, it sounds like the name of a cheap 60s horror movie, but it's not.

Anyways, most of the time you'll build turrets, mortars, jet fighters and bombers to defend yourself from The Creeper. But usually that's not enough. You also have the option to 'terraform' the environment. That way you can either dig trenches, or, which is a lot more effective, raise the terrain to wall off your base.

The whole process is quite a lot of fun, especially when you unlock things like the Bertha, which is a giant cannon, or the Thor, which is a giant spaceship with multiple turrets that rains death from above.

The thing I like the most about Creeper World 3 is that you can play whatever way you like. This might be the slow and defensive way, or the fast and offensive way. This is quite important if you care about getting in the top 10 list of each map. These lists are primarily sorted by how much time it took you to complete the map, though to be honest, you'll have a hard time beating the best times, since they're usually around 20 to 30 seconds for each map. This is especially frustrating because I doubt those times are legit most of the time.

All in all though, Creeper World 3 features a huge amount of content, which is good if you like getting your money worth. It's also bad if you want to 100% this game, because judging by the amount of levels, it might take you hundreds of hours to do so.

There's also the fact that you can make your own maps, and play other players maps right inside the game. This gives Creper World 3 almost infinitive content, though some player created levels might be too easy, or even impossible to beat.

Conclusion: Amazing game with an enormous amount of re-playability, easily worth the full price if you're a fan of tower-defense/RTS type of games.

Creeper World 3 is an absolutely brilliant game of logistics and equilibrium, where the goal is to fight a sea of fluid. Everything comes down to building networks of weapons, shields, and other devices to slowly push forward against the rising tide. Full map terraforming, a wide variety of weapons and upgrades, movable towers, artillery, shields, and aircraft are all tools at your disposal. The story campaign has a wide and clever variety of mission types and goals, and an interesting "big idea" sci-fi story line reminiscent of Arther C. Clarke is the icing on the cake here. The random mission generator, huge variety of additional non-story missions, and sizable community map selection ensure you'll never run out of new challenges. A generally slow pace, as well as full pause-and-issue functionality, ensures that you can play as methodically as you like. Fair warning, there is one timed mission in the campaign (Farbor), but after a replay or two you'll be able to beat the 35 minute timer without too much difficulty. Being smart is always vastly more important than being fast in this game.

Any fan of strategy, especially logistics-heavy strategy, would do well to check this one out. Highly recommended.

Avoid it all costs. There is a good chance, if you were born before the 90s,or even after, have a history of strategy games addiction and are sufferingfrom the almost always fatal 'just one more turn' syndrome; well, this gamemay eat your soul. That what is left. As for it being real time, you'll just beadvancing your defenses one tiny bit more, just getting that one upgrade,maybe, yeah, well, that strategic position and then, then call it a day.

You know what? From that position, the other two, just saying, be a matterof minutes, at most. Well, that was fast, I might just set up initial positionson the next planet, for tomorrow. Huh, when I set the alarm clock I still hadeight hours to sleep, now there are only five left? Damn it! I'm not going toschool anymore!

I won't talk about the gameplay. Things are already worse as they are now.Don't let yourself get fooled by it's uniqueness, the well balanced challenges,the well worked out story line or even the insane replayability.

You've still got the chance at a life! Don't waste it! I almost escaped.But I did reinstall Creeper World. And I will be in Arc. Eternal.